LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The sooner it ends the sooner the slaughter will end and also the sooner you can try and repair what will now be deep, deep hatreds
amongst parts of the community there.”
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
calling on the West to help Syrian rebel factions once they manage to oust President Bashar Assad’s regime Article, 1AEx-Phillipines president free on bond
MANILA, Philippines - Former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines was released on bail Wednesday after a judge found vote-rigging charges against her weak.
Arroyo emerged smiling from a military hospital, where she had been detained for eight months, and boarded a van that whisked her through a handful of protesters to her home in the Manila suburb of Quezon City. She posted a bond of $24,000.
In November, the government blocked Arroyo from leaving the country to obtain medical care for a bone ailment, fearing she was trying to flee expected charges of corruption and election fraud. Days later, on Nov. 18, she was arrested at a private hospital where she was being treated for the ailment.
In the vote-rigging case, Arroyo is accused of ordering a governor on the southern island of Mindanao to manipulate congressional election results in his area in favor of her political allies in 2007. She denied the allegation.
Critics claim that the vote-rigging case was thrown together quickly to justify an arrest warrant that would keep the former president from fleeing the country. Although she is out on bond now, she is still restricted from leaving the country.
Ugandan: Hunt for warlord ill-equipped
KAMPALA, Uganda - The head of a planned African Union force to hunt warlord Joseph Kony said Wednesday that he can’t start his task because he doesn’t have troops, equipment or the necessary funding.
Ugandan Col. Dick Olum spoke to The Associated Press from Yambio, South Sudan, as African Union and United Nations officials gathered in Uganda to consider regional efforts to catch Kony and dismantle his infamous Lord’s Resistance Army.
Olum said the Kony hunt was still in the hands of some 2,000 Ugandan soldiers and 500 South Sudanese troops.
The African Union force, however, was meant to start operating in March with up to 5,000 troops contributed by Uganda, South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic - the countries affected by Kony’s rebellion over the past years. The funding for the mission, meant to come from the affected states and the international community, has yet to materialize, he added.
Kony became the first suspect to be indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2005.
Copter crash in France leaves 6 dead
PARIS - All six people on board a helicopter died Wednesday when the aircraft crashed in flames in an area often referred to as France’s version of the Grand Canyon, officials say.
Francis Mene, a defense official, said the helicopter crashed while carrying out a test flight in the Verdon Gorge in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in southeastern France.
All six were employees of aviation company Eurocopter. The EADS-owned firm issued a statement confirming that the aircraft involved was manufactured by EADS and was being delivered to a buyer.
Giffords tours European physics lab
GENEVA - Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords toured the European particle physics laboratory Wednesday, cheerfully facing reporters but saying little during her first trip abroad since being shot in the head last year.
Giffords was accompanying her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, on a visit to the European Center for Nuclear Research, two days after she rode a cable car up into the French Alps. The lab, known as CERN, assembled a $2 billion cosmic-ray detector that Kelly and his team carried to the International Space Station in May 2011.
That mission came just months after Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona, was shot in a Jan. 8, 2011, rampage that killed six and wounded 13 outside a Tucson supermarket.
During a news conference Wednesday, Kelly joined the laboratory officials and four other astronauts in recalling the delicate task of installing the 7-ton Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the space station so that it can scan the universe for signs of dark matter and antimatter. Kelly commanded the mission, which was the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 07/26/2012